On July 23rd Nintendo is releasing the Opera browser for the Nintendo DS and DS Lite in Japan.  The package will retail for about $33 USD and includes a DS “cartridge” with the browser on it and a GBA cartridge which holds memory for the browser.  An individual who has some connections in the Opera community was able to score some hands on time with the new browser and has posted his initial reactions.

When I started it up I was browsing in dual screen mode. Basically the page was fit to the width of the screen and the height spanned both screens. With an easy touch of the stylus you can switch into a “zoom” mode where you are presented with a picture of the web page on the top screen and on the bottom screen you can drag a box around to see in actual size what you need to view. You can also simply swap the screens so that you can type in text as needed where fields or check boxes etc. are presented.

Jon answers even more usability questions and includes a lot of other answers about the operation of a browser on the Nintendo DS.  Anyone else have trouble reading that browser instead of Bowser?  With the naming prowess they have recently shown us I am surprised its not called the Bowser browser.